


To See What the Lake Might Yield

by sonnets_and_snowdrops



Category: Bleach, Folk Songs
Genre: Blood and Injury, Both is good, Challenge fic, Folk Song Retelling, Gen, M/M, Mild Blood, both???, or - Freeform, the real magic was inside you all along, the real magic was the friends we made along the way??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonnets_and_snowdrops/pseuds/sonnets_and_snowdrops
Summary: “Have you tried magic?” asked the three-eyed raven.Shunsui’s guts churned. He turned his face to the side and let out a half-hearted groan, part pain, and part exasperation. “No such thing,” he said.“No?”“No.”“You’re talking to a bird, and you want to tell me there’s no such thing as magic?”“Damn straight.”“You,” said the raven, “are holding onto a lot of contradictions, my guy.”Or, a retelling of Archie Fisher's folk song"The Witch of the West-Mer-Lands,"featuring Kyōraku Shunsui, Knight of the Order of the Spring and His Majesty’s Keeper of Shadows, and the white-haired Witch who heals a few wounds that even Shunsui didn't know he bore.
Relationships: Katen Kyokotsu & Kyouraku Shunsui, Kyouraku Shunsui & Ukitake Juushirou, Kyouraku Shunsui/Ukitake Juushirou
Comments: 24
Kudos: 27
Collections: The Seireitei Server April Writing Challenge 2020





	1. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑅𝑜𝑎𝑑

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the April Writing Challenge from The Seireitei's Discord server. This is only the beginning; April has been A mOnTh, and I'll post my edits to the middle and the end as soon as I can. Thank you for reading!
> 
> The prompt I chose was "The Magic."

_Face your horse into the clouds,_ the owl had said. _Face your horse into the dark, dark clouds gathering above the green, green wood, and you will find the Witch._

Kyōraku Shunsui, Knight of the Order of the Spring and His Majesty’s Keeper of Shadows, glanced to the sky and cursed. He had been riding for hours, and still, he had found no witch.

His hawk flapped faithfully beside him, a sprig of goldenrod clutched in her talons. His hound loped along the winding forest road, and his steed plodded onward, bearing him gently, as if she could sense how near to falling her master came with every step she took. Shunsui gritted his teeth and clutched tighter to her mane. His wounds were weeping again; he could smell them, even through the layers of sweat and dirt and plate armor.


	2. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑

“…water will never clean those wounds,” came a shrill voice in his ear.

Shunsui groaned. His head hurt. His guts hurt. He’d been ripped to pieces by enemy blades, and he wanted nothing more than to lay here upon the muddy ground and wait for death to claim him. He was ready, and he was willing.

“I’m serious as a goddamn heart attack,” the voice continued. “It doesn’t matter how cold or how clear the water is. You need something special, my man.”

“I need some _peace_ ,” Shunsui tried to say, but his words came out sloppy and slurred, and he tasted blood. He could have opened his eyes, but he chose not to. Better to show his weakness and let this loud, relentless, know-it-all bastard go on his merry way.

But the loud, relentless, know-it-all bastard, whoever it was, didn’t drop the matter. “That’s what I’m saying, my guy,” the shrill voice insisted. “You need _peace_. Anyone with two eyes can see that – and I, I’ll have you know, have _three._ You’ll never find peace like this, Shunsui. I wasn’t kidding. You need something special.”

Shunsui’s breath rattled in his throat, and the sound in his ears was like chains, or like carved knucklebones knocking together inside a diviner’s bag of tricks. “…three?”

“Open the two you’ve still got and see for yourself.”

More blood pooled inside Shunsui’s mouth. He tried to spit, to rid his tongue of the acid and the copper and the muck, but he coughed instead, over and over and over. His vision swam when he opened his eyes, but faintly, he could make out the shape of a big, black bird perching upon his heaving chest, and indeed, there were three glints of brightness upon its head where there should, by rights, have been two.

“Who are you?”

“Just the messenger. Cross my heart.”

“Whose messenger?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is the message, and the message is pretty simple. Are you listening?”

“…do I have a choice?”

The black, birdlike shape tilted its three-eyed head – almost, Shunsui remarked dumbly, as if it were smiling. “If you stay like this,” the bird said, “you won’t live, and you won’t die. Every single day of your life will be just like this, my man. You’ll breathe, but breathing won’t be easy. Your eyes might close, but your dreams will be many, and they won’t be very nice.”

As the bird spoke, the world began to pitch and roll and roil. Shunsui squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t do much good. He felt weary and weak and sick. “…my dreams are never nice,” he mumbled.

He felt movement upon his chest again, a shifting of weight. “What if,” said the bird, “you could change that?”

“Tried,” Shunsui answered thickly. “Herbs. Teas. Booze. Whatever. Nothing helps.”

“Have you tried magic?”

Shunsui’s guts churned. He turned his face to the side and let out a half-hearted groan, part pain, and part exasperation. “No such thing,” he said.

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re talking to a bird, and you want to tell me there’s no such thing as magic?”

“Damn straight.”

“You,” said the bird, “are holding onto a lot of contradictions, my guy.”

Shunsui groaned again. “Why,” he said, “do you care?”

“I don’t,” the bird answered, its shrill voice suddenly sharp and clipped. “But someone in this universe does. You’re making a mistake if you take that lightly.”

Against his face, Shunsui felt heat, breath. He inhaled deeply, and a familiar scent filled his nose, one that cut through the copper tang of blood and the murky smell of dirt. “…Katen,” he murmured, prying his eyes open again.

“You’ve got a loyal hound, pal,” the bird said. “Good thing, too. The road ahead isn’t for the faint of heart.”

“Where’s Kyokotsu?”

“Up above. She’s watching. She’s a good hawk.”

“Where’s my horse?”

“Dead.”

Shunsui’s heart jolted. “What?”

“I’m kidding,” said the bird. “She’s waiting by the road for your lazy ass. Your shield’s strapped to the saddle.”

A warm, wet tongue licked the side of Shunsui’s face. With an effort, Shunsui extended a hand and reached upwards towards Katen’s head. As a gesture of thanks, he scratched her just behind the ears, the way she liked. Her tail wagged back and forth behind her, and for the first time since waking, Shunsui remembered that he didn’t hate absolutely everything about being alive. “Where are we going?” he asked softly.

“To seek the Witch of the Westmoreland,” said the bird. “Only the Witch can make you hale and sound, my guy.”

“Magic, huh?”

“Exactly,” the bird said.

“You don’t say.”

“I sure do.” With that, the bird ruffled its dark feathers and shot into the air. “I’ll tell my friends in the forest that you’re coming. And remember, my guy,” it continued as it began to ascend, flapping its way upwards into the grey, grey sky, “not all wounds are the bodily kind.”

Shunsui blinked up at the bird, who was rapidly becoming little more than a speck of black above him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he called.

The bird only let out a high-pitched squawk that sounded, to Shunsui, almost like laughter.


	3. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑅𝑜𝑎𝑑, 𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛

The road was growing narrower. Shunsui’s breath was coming faster, harder. The owl hadn’t told him how much farther he had yet to ride; the owl had only ordered him to fetch the goldenrod, and that, he had done. He shot another weary, desperate gaze up to Kyokotsu, still clinging to the goldenrod as Shunsui had asked her to, still keeping pace with her master from her place just below the treetops.

He rode on.

The sun sank, and the moon and stars began to rise. The road narrowed further still. Shunsui’s horse began to slow. Beside him, Katen slowed, too, and above them, Kyokotsu began to fly in small circles, clinging ever-steadily to the goldenrod.

Shunsui, for his part, had never felt so weary. He peered down the darkening road, and he did not know whether it was a trick of the mind or a trick of the fading light or indeed the true shape of things, but it seemed to grow so narrow up ahead that, by Shunsui’s estimation, not even two men could walk abreast it. He drew a shuddering breath, and laid a gentle hand upon his steed’s strong neck. “Whoa, now,” he said, and dutifully, she stopped.

The air, Shunsui thought, was different here. It was cooler, and somehow more alive. It thrummed with potential, and Shunsui abruptly found himself reminded of the uncertain, uncanny pauses between the thunderclaps of a still-burgeoning storm. It made him feel as if he could be struck by lightning at any moment.

“That’s the way, isn’t it?” he said softly, glancing down at Katen, as if she would make answer. Her big, warm hound’s eyes stared up at him, open and guileless. “…you’re right,” he said. “Obviously. You’re always right, aren’t you, girl?”

Shunsui fixed his gaze ahead and gritted his teeth. He knew what he needed to do, and he knew it would hurt.

He pushed his way off of his steed’s back and his knees nearly gave out beneath him. He yelped, and only by leaning hard against his horse did he manage to avoid crumpling to the dirt. More blood seeped between the plates of his armor, and pressing his hands to his wounds did nothing to stem the flow.

“Down,” he said to Katen, as blood dripped through his fingers and onto the ground. Katen, duty-bound and loyal, knelt upon the road. “Kyokotsu,” he called, raising one red-stained hand into the air. Kyokotsu swooped lower, and then lower, and then lower, until she was low enough for Shunsui to grasp at the goldenrod between her talons. She relinquished her prize, and then flapped her great wings and ascended to the treetops again. Shunsui watched as she hovered beside one branch, then another, then another, and then one more still, before she finally found a branch that she liked well enough to perch upon. A faint smile danced along Shunsui’s dry lips. “You always were particular,” he said, and Kyokotsu answered him by tilting her head to the side and letting out a loud shriek.

He put his right foot forward, and then his left. “I’ll come back to you,” he promised. “Or, I’ll try.” He put his right foot forward again, and then his left, and then his feet faltered. He glanced over his shoulder, only to see Katen staring after him, still and silent. His heart ached, and he felt his throat go tight. “Or,” he said, “I’ll blow my horn when it’s safe for you to follow me. How’s that?”

Katen made no answer. Far overhead, Kyokotsu screeched.


	4. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑎𝑘𝑒

The water was cool that day, and clear as the thought of an all-knowing goddess. For that, the Witch was grateful; sometimes, it was difficult to see all the way to the bottom, and that always made it harder for him to find his friends.

He bathed at twilight, as was his custom. He scrubbed at his hands first, clearing the dirt from beneath his fingernails, stuck there from the time he’d spent digging up roots and herbs in the afternoon. When he was satisfied that his hands were clean, he stretched his long arms upwards and bound his hair, twirling the long, silken strands of pure white around and around and pinning them in place with a carved rod of yew, a gift from his sister, and a remnant of a long-ago time when he still counted himself among the mundane and the mortal. He inhaled, long and deep, and exhaled, longer and deeper still. A smile lifted his pale lips, and he closed his eyes and whispered a brief prayer of thanks: “You’ve bestowed easy breath upon me today,” he said, still smiling gently. “You didn’t need to do that. You never do. You are gracious, and I am glad.”

The Witch felt a soft nip at one of his heels. He glanced downward, and he spied one of his dearest friends, a small, silver fish, flitting and bobbing and darting to and fro beside him. The Witch grinned, bent low, reached into the water, and extended his clean hand, palm-up. The little fish paused, as if it were considering, and then burst forward and pushed its tiny head against the center of the Witch’s palm and wiggled back and forth, almost like a child nuzzling into a mother’s kind embrace.

“Do you want me to come and swim with you, little one?” the Witch asked.

The fish wiggled back and forth once more, faster than before.

“I thought you might,” the Witch said. “Do you know where your brother is?”

At that, the fish wiggled again, and then began to pull away, flicking its tail urgently towards the center of the lake.

“I see,” said the Witch, raising one black eyebrow and scanning below the surface, his curiosity piqued. “But you won’t tell me, will you?”

The fish pulled further away, and this time, its wiggling revealed nothing.

“We played hide-and-seek yesterday,” the Witch pointed out.

One fin slid upwards and then back down again, almost as if the little fish were shrugging.

“You boys would do well to learn some new games,” the Witch said. He let out a small, affectionate sigh, shook his head, and glanced upwards to the sky, where dark clouds were rapidly gathering. “Tell your brother I don’t have long, all right?” he said to the little fish. “There’s a storm coming, and you know as well as I do that work must come before play.”

The fish’s wide, watery eyes, verdant green and shot through with a wild and uncanny intelligence, filled first with disappointment, and then with understanding. And then, without any further pleading or ado, it hurried away, disappearing into the depths of the lake.

Rushes and reeds grew aplenty on the shores of the lake, and the Witch extended a graceful hand and plucked one now. He laid it between his teeth, murmured a prayer, moved his fingers just so, and sank beneath the surface. He inhaled, and breathing water became like breathing air – labored, yes, because even underwater, the Witch was who he was and his body had its history and its limits, but possible, and rendered so thanks to the grace of one even more powerful than he. He kicked his long, strong legs, opened his own wide, wild, green eyes, and shot downwards, following his friend. He knew the sorts of tricks that the little fish and his brother liked to play, and he was confident that he could find them both before the storm broke and duty called him again.


End file.
